This contribution was provided by Jamey Newberg of The Newberg Report. The Newberg Report provides daily coverage of the Texas Rangers.

For all the Juan Gonzalez-ness that Joey Gallo throws down, you read stories about Gallo spending his winters training with Jason Giambi, whose on-base numbers were more formidable than his power, and the picture gathers depth.

You read about Gallo “living in Adrian Beltre’s back pocket” in camp, as Mike Daly described it in a Monday morning MLB Network Radio interview.

About Gallo hanging around fellow lefty bomber Prince Fielder (nearly as much an on-base monster as Giambi was) as eagerly around the cage as he is around Beltre in the field.

About Gallo engaged in regular conversations with Michael Young about absolutely whatever Young wants to get across to the 21-year-old.

You read all those things, and you gain confidence that we’re fortunate not only that Texas engineered the first 10 rounds of its 2012 draft to go far over slot on Gallo with the compensatory pick it gained for the loss of C.J. Wilson, but also to have Gallo in a system where he’s gotten the coaching he has, and now has Beltre and Fielder and Young, along with Giambi, lining his path.

For all the patience that we need to summon up as far as Gallo’s arrival is concerned, there’s comfort in recognizing how much a kid like that can grow during finishing school, just by being around Beltre in the field and Fielder by the cage and Young anywhere at all, not to mention Giambi in the off-season, and I won’t even stretch to point out he took Greg Maddux’s daughter to his senior prom.

I believe part of what made Josh Hamilton so dominant in Texas was, yes, being embraced by an organization willing to take every step it could take to set him up for success, but also the fact that he got the chance to play for Ron Washington, and for all the sadness that clouds their careers today, nobody can deny their good fortune to have crossed paths. That was a fit.

I heard a talk radio discussion last week about how Monta Ellis and Tyson Chandler and J.J. Barea, for instance, have seen their games blossom — or even re-blossom — under Rick Carlisle. We all know what Johnny Narron did for Mike Napoli’s career. What playing with Young meant to Ian Kinsler. Beltre for Elvis Andrus.

If the Rangers’ Fall Instructs experiment with Ryan Cordell at shortstop is really something the organization takes into 2015 — an opportunity created in part with Jurickson Profar down and Luis Sardinas and Odubel Herrera and Chris Bostick gone — you can imagine how important it is that Cordell, in camp well before minor leaguers are expected to report, is getting to watch a rededicated Andrus get his work in.

There have already been reports that Young (“the work really gets fun for me when I get a chance to work with a young kid and help him out with his day and help him out with his career”) has stopped down with Rougned Odor and Michael De Leon in the last few days, and he’s spent time with Cordell as well. That’s awesome.

We’ll never be able to quantify how much any of these guys will have meant to Gallo’s development, or Cordell’s, or what Chi Chi Gonzalez can add to his polish by watching Yu Darvish work, and we don’t yet know whose career Jeff Banister will be indispensable to, but you see Young say, “I’m shocked [Banister] never got an opportunity before . . . he’s very hungry, very passionate . . . brings a lot of things to the table,” and then Phil Klein adds, “He says, ‘Why not us?,’ like people can doubt us, but it doesn’t matter . . . what it comes down to it is you’re there to win the day and get your work in, and let people say what they want to say . . . Oh, my God, I loved it . . . it gives you goose bumps” — well, me, too.

Leonys Martin has exceptional defensive and baserunning tools. Jayce Tingler, whose work with him started months ago, will help them play at an even higher level.

Banister is going to be great for Andrus. I think we all feel that.

Something, according to a whole bunch of local reports, has gotten into Darvish, and it’s all good. Banister has apparently looked his ace in the eye and said he wants him pitching inside more, and wants his starting pitchers as a group to lead this club in communicating better, and Darvish is telling reporters — in English, which is pretty cool — that he’s all in on both counts.

Darvish played for two managers in Japan (Trey Hillman and Masataka Nashida) and now two in the Major Leagues. You can say about dozens of Rangers players that they have the opportunity to take all the positives they learned from Ron Washington and blend in the things that Banister brings to the table — but for Darvish, who had no minor league seasoning stateside and thus has basically learned the MLB game from Wash and Mike Maddux, the idea of integrating Banister’s perspective and expectations into his approach makes you wonder whether it could help the 28-year-old take his elite game to a new level in 2015, as a pitcher and as a leader, the latter of which would give me more confidence that he’ll want to continue paving this path in Texas, in the form of his next contract.

The Rangers, set to face the Royals in the exhibition opener tomorrow, got an intrasquad game in on Sunday, and in it Darvish struck out two in a scoreless inning of work, while Anthony Ranaudo fanned three in his scoreless frame. It was a game that featured the three Ross’s getting work on the mound — Detwiler, Ohlendorf, and Wolf — though not Robbie Jr., who was traded five weeks ago for Ranaudo. Maybe the Rangers do for Ranaudo and the Red Sox do for Ross what Narron did for Napoli and Carlisle has done for Barea.

Actually, look back to Edinson Volquez for Hamilton and what altered paths did for those two in 2008. That’s not to suggest Ranaudo is going to go 17-6, 3.21 in the big leagues this season or that Ross will be that dominant in a bullpen role, but this isn’t Strat-O-Matic or FanDuel, and sometimes new coaches and new roles and new expectations do make a difference.

Ranaudo takes Ross’s number 46, which I mention only because I tend to spotlight a very specific uniform number this day every year, and 46 has a pretty light Rangers history, but today I’m 46, which gives me license to shoehorn, not that it would be unfair for you to suggest every day is Shoehorn Day in this space.

I’m not sure I’d say I feel older this morning, but I have felt older lately, for any number of reasons, and when Minnie Minoso passed away on Sunday, another piece of my youth was lost.

Pretty much all baseball cards were magic to me as a child, but few were magical as this one:

The back of the card described a “lined single to left field” by the man whose flawlessly classic baseball name, even to a wide-eyed eight-year-old, and the tremendously cool, tricked-up White Sox uniform he rocked were only the second- and third-coolest things about that card. Minnie Minoso was 53 years old when he rifled that single to left that I had perfectly imagined in my second-grade mind.

Minoso, who got into three September games in that 1976 season (one of which Bobby Jones appeared in for the Angels), had famously played big league baseball in the ’40s, the ’50s, the ’60s, and the ’70s, and that was so cool.

When Minoso (who started playing in the Negro Leagues in ’46) turned age 46, he was seven years post-retirement — but five years pre-unretirement.

And nine years pre-unretirement, too. Minoso got into two games for Chicago in 1980.

And then one for the tremendously cool, tricked-up independent St. Paul Saints club in 1993.

And one for the Saints in 2003.

Seven decades of ball. C’mon. Does it get any cooler?

Minnie Minoso is gone, taking with him that little 2.5” x 3.5” piece of my youth, which probably makes me no different from baseball fans from any of three or four generations.

So yeah, feeling a bit older.

But just about every time I sit down to write, I end up feeling a bit younger by time I finish and click “Send.” I think the word “inspiration” means breathing life into something, and I don’t take for granted that you guys give me the chance to write things I want about baseball. I appreciate that a lot.

I appreciate the opportunity to stay close to this great game, any way I can.

I started doing this when Juan Gonzalez was having his career year and Michael Young was playing his first full season of minor league baseball, and I’m still doing it as Young’s post-playing path brings him back to the Texas Rangers, where he’s already impacting the paths Joey Gallo and Michael De Leon find themselves on.

And as the Rangers make preparations for an international J2 class that will be full of kids born after I first started emailing these reports out.

It’s difficult to internalize all that Theo Epstein and the Chicago Cubs have done this winter without cracking a smile or two out of genuine fervor. With 108 years of World Series-less baseball behind it, the organization invested six years and $155 million in December on free agent starter Jon Lester to assume the role of staff ace. Further, Epstein and company have reeled in the pitch-framing dexterities of Miguel Montero and versatile bat and glove of Dexter Fowler, adding the intriguing relief arms of Jason Motte and Felix Doubront in the meanwhile. And don’t forget about the farm system, which according to ESPN’s Keith Law owns two of the top prospects in baseball in Kris Bryant and Jorge Soler, who are accompanied by several other high-end position prospects.

On an individualistic level, the same ought to be said of Soler. The 23-year-old outfielder who signed with Chicago for $30 million over nine years in 2012 didn’t wait to give Cubs fans reasons for excitement late last season. He punished a 90 MPH four-seamer from Mat Latosover the centerfield wall at Great American Ballpark in his first career plate appearance on August 27, finishing the day with a 2-for-4 batting line and a pair of runs batted in. The weeks to come yielded much of the same from the Cuban prodigy. In 24 games and 97 plate appearances with Chicago throughout late August and September, Soler finished with five home runs and a triple slash line of .292/.330/.573. His .281 isolated slugging percentage was fifth-highest among qualifiers in that span.

While it’s difficult to cram in streaks of success or failure into such an abbreviated stint of playing time (and it’s equally as difficult to analyze a prospect in such among amount of playing time), one thing we definitively gleaned on Soler’s game during his first stint in The Show was his affinity for elevated pitches in the strike zone. It didn’t take long for that to reveal itself on the field, either. Soler’s frozen-rope home run against Latos originated up-and-in on his hands, a pitch that would arguably give most rookies some level of trouble. But with his physically imposing and freakishly gifted 6-foot-4 frame, getting on-plane with Latos’ fastball seemed quite easy for him. And that’s probably why Soler’s slugging percentage heat map from last season looks the way it does below.

Whether an opposing pitcher attempted to elevate his fastball or simply missed ‘up’ with a breaking offering to the young Cuban, there was a good chance that Soler mashed it last September. Against all pitches located within the upper-half of the strike zone, Soler slugged .973 with a home-run-to-fly-ball ratio of 35.7%. Each of his five home runs last season originated at the upper-half of the zone, three against four-seam fastballs, another versus a sinker and another coming off a horribly misplaced Sam LeCurechangeup, which you can see here in all of it’s towering-fly-ball glory. I got the chance to see Soler bomb a fastball to dead center during his time in low-A ball three summers ago (video here), which looked a lot like the fast-twitch swing we all saw last autumn.

For as impressive as his ability to cover the upper half of the zone was with Chicago in September, Soler’s lower-half tendencies should also be noted. He made contact on just 64.2% of his swings against pitches ‘down’ in the strike zone, which was significantly lower than his 78.3% contact rate on upper-half stuff. To that point, 17 of his 24 total strikeouts last season were brought about on swings-and-misses on pitches at the lower third of the zone, something that illuminates a potential soft-spot for opposing pitchers to attack this spring. Fortunately for Chicago, Soler is young and has time to adjust as he progresses as a big-league hitter. Growing pains are inevitable; how a hitter deals with them over time will determine the rate at which he succeeds in the future.

Adjustments against upper-half stuff aren’t necessary at this point, however. Soler has already proven he can mash with the best of them in that department.

]]>http://www.gammonsdaily.com/elevate-to-jorge-soler-at-your-own-risk-in-2015/feed/0Coffee and Clippings: In face of a tall task, Hanley Ramirez putting in the work in left fieldhttp://www.gammonsdaily.com/coffee-and-clippings-in-face-of-a-tall-task-hanley-ramirez-putting-in-the-work-in-left-field/
http://www.gammonsdaily.com/coffee-and-clippings-in-face-of-a-tall-task-hanley-ramirez-putting-in-the-work-in-left-field/#respondTue, 03 Mar 2015 14:16:02 +0000http://www.gammonsdaily.com/?p=31192Tim Britton (@TimBritton) of the Providence Journal writes that Hanley Ramirez is putting in the work for his transition to left field with the Red Sox…

The story about a new acquisition learning how to play the Green Monster in left field is a standby spring trope in these parts — about as common each March as a player being in superlative condition or a pitcher really feeling good about that new two-seamer he’s been experimenting with.

This is a reminder, then, that Hanley Ramirez doesn’t face the usual transition to Fenway Park’s left field. His task is drastically different from the one that faced his positional predecessors, guys like Carl Crawford and Jonny Gomes and Yoenis Cespedes.

With the Red Sox recently adding Yoan Moncada to the fold last week (details and audio interview), the biggest international domino has fallen and now there’s more certainty for teams and agents going forward about what teams can spend on July 2nd. In an early draft of this article, I was going to point out that MLB still hadn’t told teams what their international bonus pools were, in an effort to discourage teams from agreeing to verbal deals since they wouldn’t know the exact figure of what they could spend. MLB sent out those figures this week, and they fell in line with what teams expected: last year’s slots with a 5-7% bump.

As noted earlier today in the College Draft Prospects Stat Roundup, Michael Matuella returned to the mound on Sunday evening, throwing 23 pitches in a scoreless inning against Rider.

Matuella started the game off with a 95-mph fastball, and he worked down in the zone, missing his spots early. His fastball came in at 93-94 against the first few hitters, and he only threw the pitch to his arm side.

]]>http://www.gammonsdaily.com/coffee-and-clippings-in-face-of-a-tall-task-hanley-ramirez-putting-in-the-work-in-left-field/feed/0Around the majors report: Kershaw is named Opening Day starterhttp://www.gammonsdaily.com/around-the-majors-report-kershaw-is-named-opening-day-starter/
http://www.gammonsdaily.com/around-the-majors-report-kershaw-is-named-opening-day-starter/#respondTue, 03 Mar 2015 13:05:43 +0000http://www.gammonsdaily.com/?p=31184Lee Sinins is the creator of the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, the most powerful baseball encyclopedia on the market. All stats in the ATM reports are generated from the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, unless explictly stated otherwise. FRAA, since 1950, comes from Baseball Prospectus. Lee can be followed on twitter @BaseballEncyclo.

JUPITER, Fla.—The bullpen session lasted 15 pitches, maybe three minutes. “There were more cameras clicking and rolling and more media members and fans than we often see at the peak of spring training,” said one Marlins official.

Because it was Jose Fernandez. “And,” says General Manager Dan Jennings, “Jose is one of the most unusual pitchers I’ve ever seen.”

It was a memorable session for the Marlins finally planting the baseball flag in Miami, because, at 22, Fernandez may be to this franchise what Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright are to theirs. Look what’s happened to the Phish: the best player in their history, Giancarlo Stanton, made it clear to ownership that he wanted the Marlins to work in South Florida and would sign if they spent to build around him, and when he asked to backload his $325M deal, they added Martin Prado and Mike Morse, Mat Latos, Dee Gordon and others, and Stanton opened spring training the seventh highest paid player on the team and one of the focuses of the 2015 season. Welcome ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated…

Oh yes, and on Saturday the Marlins think they may have had a record media day for Ichiro Suzuki taking the field in a Miami uniform. And Ichiro is here to be a fourth behind Stanton, Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich, arguably the best outfield in the National League. And Ichiro has already struck up a comic friendship with Ozuna, teaching him one Japanese word a day.

Welcome to the 2015 world of the Miami Marlins. They are one of this spring training’s destinations, which they were not when they won the World Series in 1997 and 2003, which happens to be more World Series titles than the Astros, Mariners, Rays, Rockies, Padres, Rangers, Nationals and Diamondbacks, combined. “This really is fun,” said Fernandez Monday, less than 24 hours after the 15 fastball bullpen session. Fun, and very important, because it was the first time he’d thrown off a mound since undergoing Tommy John Surgery last May 16.

“The ball really felt great coming out of my hand, just like 2013,” said Fernandez. “Clean, really perfect,” said Mike Redmond. “About as good as you could dream,” said Jennings. “Now we just have to make sure he doesn’t get too excited. He’s so enthusiastic, so confident, he probably thinks he could pitch Opening Day. But we have to be cautious.”

“I understand,” said Fernandez. “I’ve thrown breaking balls on flat ground, and it’s been fine; in doing it I’ve actually gotten a much better changeup. But I know the process. I probably won’t throw breaking balls off a mound until the end of this month. We all know that I need to be completely healed before I pitch in games.” And if he’s back right after the All-Star Game and is close to the Jose Fernandez of 2013 in August and September it is possible that the Marlins will go down to the wire with a shot at the playoffs.

“One thing we know is that Jose is very smart, very tough, fearless,” said Jennings. “He was once asked if he was worried about something like a big game, and he said, ‘I’ve been in jail three times trying to get here and pitch in the major leagues. I know what tough is.”

And when he finished that 15 fastball session, he walked over and hugged his mother and grandmother Olga, whom he calls “the love of my life,” a woman who got here on a visa and surprised Fernandez in November, 2013, the day before he was named Rookie of the Year. And a couple of days after finishing third in the Cy Young balloting behind Kershaw and Wainwright.

The one semi-controversy Fernandez has encountered was in September, 2013, when he homered against the Braves. Brian McCann took issue to the way Jose went around the bases and the dugouts emptied. “The way we play baseball in Cuba is with so much enthusiasm and joy and fun that in this country sometimes people think it’s disrespectful,” Fernandez said. “That’s something we have to learn. In Cuba, people aren’t offended by flipping bats or having fun, but we can’t do all that here. I respect that. I respect every major league baseball player.”

It is a different baseball culture. Puig has taken his share of criticism, although when Puig’s name came up around the batting cage at Fenway one day, a Red Sox executive said, “I love him. He has a passion. He loves the game. He plays baseball the way my eight year old plays it.”

Fernandez is exceptionally intelligent, one who studies people and the game. “Baseball is what I’ve loved my entire life,” he said. “When I was a little kid I watched games. Of course I went to playoff games in the Cuban league. People have so much fun, with the music and the dancing girls on the dugouts…”

When he was learning the game, Fernandez wanted to be an everyday player. He was a third baseman, and, as the Braves learned, he could hit. By the time he was 12 he was enrolled in a Cuban sports academy, where elite track, boxing, fútbol, baseball and other sport athletes live five nights a week, study until noon, are fed handsomely and get training. He went to the same academy where in 1999 I spent a day and watched two 15-year olds named Kendrys Morales and Yulieski Gourriel (a great player who now plays in Japan).

Coming up in the Cuban system, Fernandez was too young before he defected to play with Puig, Tomas or any of the players who defected to the U.S. and became recognizable names. When he arrived in Tampa to go to high school and continue his education, he did get the chance to go to a Rays game at The Trop, and calls it “a dream come true. I couldn’t believe what it was like.”

He was the 14th player picked in the 2011 draft, one that began with Gerrit Cole and saw high school phenoms Dylan Bundy and Archie Bradley selected earlier. Less than two years later he was pitching for the Marlins and put together one of the greatest seasons for an age 21 (which he turned on July 31) pitcher: 12-6, 2.19, 172.2 IP, 111 H, 58 BB, 187 strikeouts, 9.7 strikeouts per 9 innings, the fewest hits (5.8) per nine innings in the league and praise from Joe Maddon that he “is about the best young pitcher I’ve ever seen.”

Fernandez feels “what happened to me last year is that I altered the mechanics that I had in 2013, the mechanics that got me to the big leagues. I studied a lot of video after the operation and found what I changed. I will not let that happen again.”

He now has long toss, flat ground and simple games of catch recorded, and studies them. “He’s very disciplined,” said Jennings. “He asks questions, he studies video of other pitchers and opposing hitters. He wants to know everything.” And, while he escaped Cuba, he is proud of the culture, proud that his native country has the highest literacy rate in the world, proud of all the baseball players.

He has never forgotten the discipline he encountered at the academy. In his first two spring trainings, he rode his bicycle all around Jupiter, both to get the park and for the conditioning racing bikes require. “I stopped riding about six months ago when a friend of mine was hit by a car and injured in an accident,” Fernandez said. Now? “I run, do cardio and a lot of swimming. Not only is swimming great for conditioning, but the arm strokes are similar to the throwing motion.”

Maybe Giancarlo Stanton becomes baseball’s Lebron James in South Florida, a responsibility he willingly accepts. Maybe Yelich is a batting champion in waiting, as many suspect.

And maybe Jose Fernandez returns for two great months and helps carry the Marlins into October. They all are part of baseball’s dream, extraordinary players, bright, articulate, passionate. Stanton told Jeffrey Loria “I don’t want to be making all that money and be in last place in September. I want to be competing for championships.”

Fernandez’s motto is “every five days I go into a start as if it’s the last game I’ll ever pitch.”

Two years ago, Loria tried to buy a winning team, and when it turned out to be a Mercenary Territory, he conceded it was “a mistake” and rebooted. Then, out of his own system emerged a franchise player who accepted the role of franchise leader and franchise pitcher with what Hemingway called “duende,” whose first 15 fastballs of the spring were the heralded highlight of the week the Marlins became a destination.

Lou Musto is a beat writer for the SWB RailRiders and has been featured on USA Today, Forbes, and Comcast Sports Net. Follow him on Twitter @LouisMusto.

The Los Angeles Dodgers were awfully busy this offseason trading off old talent and bringing in new (old) contributors, but all their unraveling may have opened the door for the big-league emergence of their next great prospect—Joc Pederson. The Dodgers’ postseason fate could rest on the defending Pacific League MVP’s shoulders, as they will be looking to him to compensate at the plate for the losses of Dee Gordon, Hanley Ramirez and Matt Kemp.

Pederson is positioned to become an everyday player for Los Angeles in 2015, joining a stellar outfield that includes All-Star left fielder Yasiel Puig and right fielder Andre Ethier. His bat should be a welcome addition in the middle of the lineup, where he should be productive immediately.

In 121 games for the Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes last season, the 22-year-old hit .303 with 33 home runs and 78 runs batted in. His high strikeout total of 149 is an alarming red flag, but he proved he does have some discipline at the plate, also drawing 100 walks. In fact, his high volume of strikeouts may actually be as a result of being too patient at the plate. He has a tendency to lay off pitches that are away and look for something he can drive.

The Dodgers will obviously hope for him to improve in the strikeout department, but he led the Pacific League with a .435 on-base percentage. They certainly won’t complain if he continues to produce at such a high level in spite of his strikeout total.

Pederson has been a top prospect within the Dodgers’ organization since a breakout 2013 campaign in the California League with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. Though generally slotted behind shortstop Corey Seager and pitcher Julio Urias in most top prospect lists, the former 11th round pick is the team’s most promising, MLB-ready prospect in the system.

He appeared in 18 games for the Dodgers as a September callup last year but saw minimal playing time, producing a .143/.351/.143 line in 38 plate appearances. He drew nine walks and struck out 11 times.

All Pederson has to offer cannot be found purely when he steps to the plate, however. When he gets on base, he can be just as lethal, having stolen 30 bases in 43 attempts at Albuquerque.

MLB.com ranks Pederson as the 13th-best prospect (and second-best outfield prospect) in baseball, earning an overall grade of 60 with a grade of 55 or better in every category (60 in power). His offensive output at the Minor League level could easily translate to the Majors, with the potential to be a perennial 30-20 guy playing at Dodger Stadium.

While much of the focus this spring will be on the Twins’ Byron Buxton or Cubs’ Kris Bryant, Pederson is the player with the greatest potential to make an immediate impact for his big-league club from the start of 2015. He will need to. Kemp and Ramirez drove in 22 percent of the Dodgers’ runs last season, and Gordon led the league with 62 stolen bases and scored a team-high 92 runs. The additions of veterans Howie Kendrick and Jimmy Rollins might supplement some of what the Dodgers lost, but a highly productive rookie season from Pederson would do wonders for the team’s offense and alleviate the pressure mounting on the pitchers to be flawless.

He currently ranks among the top 50 players in FanGraphs’ ZiPS projections for 2015, well above Gordon, Kemp and Ramirez. And while a line of .239/.327/.420 is not ideal, it’s still a stronger projection than for any other expected National League rookie position player not named Kris Bryant.

Pederson does face some challenges this spring before he can be penciled in as the Dodgers’ surefire starting center fielder, but the odds are in his favor. He is the only true center fielder on the roster with a strong defensive skill set to go along with his offensive potential.

The adjustment to the Major League game might take some time, but once he has settled in, Pederson could evolve into an All-Star caliber player capable of making the Los Angeles fans forget about Kemp. The upside alone makes him an intriguing prospect in 2015. Whether or not he can deliver will decide what kind of team the Dodgers will be.

About the SandlotThe Sandlot is a collection of works from some of baseball’s most talented aspiring analysts. If you have a baseball blog, experience in baseball analytics, love creating baseball infograhics or simply love to write about baseball we would like to invite you to submit your work to the Sandlot. We will review all submissions and publish the best work on Gammons Daily.

Aside from the compulsive denials, legal action and subsequent public backlash elicited from his performance-enhancing drug use, the most prevalent story-line connected to Milwaukee Brewers right fielder Ryan Braun over the past two years has been the health of his right thumb. The 2011 National League MVP has battled soreness and discomfort in his right hand since the middle portion of his suspension-reduced 2013 campaign with Milwaukee, missing whereabouts of 30 games worth of action in that span as a result. Low back spasms and abdomen strains have also affected him, though to a lesser extent.

Last October, Braun underwent a procedure to “freeze” the nerve causing the pain he had experienced. But many have questioned whether he will return to prominence at the plate. Last season, he posted uncharacteristically poor .266/.324/.453 triple slash line and career-low 1.2 wins above replacement, per FanGraphs. At the Brewers’ spring training complex in Maryvale, Ariz., last week, he attempted to put those questions to bed. The former first-round draft selection from Miami told Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he expects to not only rebound, but be one of the best players in the league this season.

“I feel good. I’m only 31. I feel at least as good as I did when I was 21,” said Braun, who’s owed $124 million over the next seven seasons. “The better I play, the more I’m going to help the team. I have pride in being the best I can be, knowing that the better I play, the more I’ll help our team. I expect to go out there and be one of the best players in the league.”

Spring is a time of revival and hope across baseball, so Braun’s optimistic tone shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to us at this juncture. But how much confidence should Milwaukee place within its [former] face-of-the-franchise, and his ability to rake amongst the game’s best with a presumably healthy right thumb? No one definitively knows the answer to that question other than Braun, and perhaps team physicians. But what we outsiders can do is explain how the thumb hampered his production. We’ll use May 19, 2013 as our starting point, since Braun admitted that was the date at which he initially felt discomfort.

As Braun himself explained, it was that date in which he laced a single against JoeKelly‘s changeupin a winning effort for Milwaukee, a swing we now know set off his thumb’s nerve issues. In his 671 plate appearances since that date, Braun has posted a weighted on-base average of .328, decimal points higher than the .323 league mark. To delineate his regressions in as fair a manner as possible, we’ll set that number aside a near identical amount of prior playing time: His 670 plate appearances previous to that date (beginning on May 21, 2012) yielded a .405 wOBA, sixth-highest in baseball. So, what happened?

His inner-half potency vanished — that’s what happened. In his 671 plate appearances since the initial thumb discomfort, Braun owns an inner-half slash line of .259/.312/.413, a weighted on-base average of .317 and HR/FB rate of 10.2%. His 670 trips to the dish prior to that date yielded a .343/.389/.676 line, .444 wOBA and HR/FB rate of 26.2%. Pitchers certainly seemed to have identified this thumb-induced weakness, as they’ve increased the percentage of pitches to the inner third of the strike zone to 42.2% since the discomfort took place, up from 38.7% previously. To that point, no player in baseball saw more inner-third pitches in 2014 than Braun’s 42.1% frequency, compared to the league-average hitter who saw 28.1% of offerings located in on his hands last season.

With a .335 BABIP on inner-half pitches in those plate appearances prior to the injury, Braun was probably due for some old-fashioned regression in this department at some point, and the .299 BABIP he’s posted since the discomfort proves it to some extent. But a decrease to his inner-half hard-hit rate (28.7% to 21.0%), an increase in ground ball frequency (43.9% to 47.0%) and coming up empty on a higher percentage of his swings (18.0% miss rate to 22.4%) tells us that bad luck and happenstance weren’t the only factors in play here. Braun’s thumb discomfort has clearly limited his ability to cover the inner-half of the plate, and that’s concerning for a Milwaukee front office that may or may not be convinced he’ll fulfill his promise of being one of baseball’s best hitters in 2015.

As you consider talking or writing about these strikeout numbers, here are some quotes from some others on strikeouts to inspire you:

I’ve never heard a crowd boo a homer, but I’ve heard plenty of boos after a strikeout. – Babe Ruth

I eventually became proud of my strikeouts, because each one represented another learning experience. – Willie Stargell

I feel like if I cut down on my strikeouts, it would help my average. But I don’t want to be too patient. I just keep the same approach as always. – Bobby Abreu

Do I want someone to get more hits than me? No. Do I want someone to hit more home runs than me? No. Do I want someone to have more RBI than me? No. I get a kick out of seeing the all-time leaders and my name’s on top of every one, with the exception of strikeouts. I get a kick out of that. – George Brett

Pro-rated at 500 at-bats a year that means that for two years out of the fourteen I played, I never even touched the ball. – Norm Cash, on his 1,081 strikeouts

Years ago, striking out was the scarlet letter. Now it doesn’t matter. - Joe Maddon

VIERA, Fla.—If Bryce Harper had just gone a normal route and had gone from high school to college, he would be graduating this spring. He’s smart enough and competitive enough to have done so; his year in junior college at the age of 17, he took all serious courses and completed the year with a 4.0 QPA.

Of course, there is no normal route when you are Bryce Harper. On the cover of Sports Illustrated at 16, and, please remember, it’s not like he asked to be there. He was the first pick in the 2010 draft when he was 17, he stole home when he was a teenager, won Rookie of the Year when he was 18, and now, at the age of a college senior has spent much of what should have been his library and frat days dealing with what Kemer Brett once said—“the worst curse in life is unlimited potential.”

In many ways Harper is baseball’s Lebron James, without the brand. A National official Sunday mentioned how so many people claim to not like James, an all-time great player and to those with whom he works in baseball and business is considered a terrific person. Harper can, at times, be unfiltered, like so many college kids, and has absorbed the slings and arrows of those who resonated his “clown question” to a Toronto reporter asking if he were going out drinking (he is a Mormon), and recently got chastised when he said he wanted to bring a championship back to Washington, because no baseball team in Washington has won a World Series since 1924. Puh-leaeze. A 22 year old can’t wish for his team to win it all?

“Do I play with an edge? Yes, no doubt,” Harper says. “I’ve heard suggestions that I need to tone it down, and learn not to play so hard. That’s not me. It’s not Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw. I’ve learned a lot in three big league seasons. I need to stay healthy. Of course. I know that. But I want to be the best. I want to win World Series. I want to be the MVP of the World Series, because that means we won. I want rings, because most of the great players won rings.

“I don’t live in a world where I don’t wish other people success. I love watching Mike Trout play. I hope he wins MVPs and we play in the World Series and we beat the Angels. I love watching Giancarlo Stanton play, and I’d love to know him, but I hope every time we play the Marlins we beat them, just because that’s the way competitors think.”

Brad Ausmus says “the thing Justin Verlander hates most is not being great.” Andrew Miller says that if he were to play Monopoly against Verlander, Justin could do anything to bury him, and that when Verlander decided he’d golf with the guys, he spent the winter taking lessons and went from shooting 100 to 75. “That,” says Harper, “is what baseball is supposed to be.”

He gets having to be on the field. His games played have gone from 139 to 118 to 100, his homers from 22 to 20 to 13. But, healthy last October, he put up a 1.251 OPS with three homers against the Giants.

“I understand that to be considered a great player I have to be on the field,” Harper says. “But it’s not like I asked to be out. I got hurt sliding into third (hustling out a triple) and running into a wall.” On the slide, he suffered a torn ACL in his left thumb on April 25 and missed more than two months.

Harper is one player who respects and appreciates the history of the game. When he was still 17, I went down to the Instructional League here in Viera to interview him, and he was a kid, asking question after question. I told him how George Brett always went out of the batter’s box thinking double, which Harper found fascinating. When he got to the majors, Harper hit an infield pop that was messed up; he went out of the box thinking double, and slid safely into third.

Brett in his prime missed 34, 45 and 63 games because of hustle-related injuries, and in the 1980 season—in which he had 24 homers, 22 strikeouts and batted .390—he played in only 117 games.

So Bryce Harper wants to be regular season and World Series MVP and bring a world championship to Washington? So he bares his soul on the field every day? So he sometimes speaks before he sculpts an appropriate cliché?

Demographics me no aging demographics. Give me Stanton wanting to defer hundreds of millions of dollars and play the 2015 season as the seventh highest-paid Marlin because he wants to win. Mike Trout never goes down the first base line slower than 4.1 seconds. Bryce Harper can’t help himself from running into walls and diving into third and wanting to kick the behind of every great player he admires.

Few have greater reverence for the great players who gather in Cooperstown every July than I, but when I use my $270 worth of tickets at Fenway’s home opener I can’t wait to see Harper and Dustin Pedroia on the same field. Or when I watch MLB Tonight or scan my Direct TV MLB package, I want to see Harper and Trout, Stanton and McCutchen, Kershaw and Wainwright and Verlander, who want their teams to win more than any fan in their park.

]]>http://www.gammonsdaily.com/peter-gammons-bryce-harper-baseballs-tenacious-22-year-old-star/feed/1Around the majors report: Minnie Minoso dieshttp://www.gammonsdaily.com/around-the-majors-report-minnie-minoso-dies/
http://www.gammonsdaily.com/around-the-majors-report-minnie-minoso-dies/#respondMon, 02 Mar 2015 12:22:03 +0000http://www.gammonsdaily.com/?p=31146Lee Sinins is the creator of the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, the most powerful baseball encyclopedia on the market. All stats in the ATM reports are generated from the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, unless explictly stated otherwise. FRAA, since 1950, comes from Baseball Prospectus. Lee can be followed on twitter @BaseballEncyclo.

1) Minnie Minoso died, at the age of 92, 90 or maybe even something else. There is uncertainty whether Minoso was born in 1922 or 1925 and he admitted he didn’t know his real age. (The Complete Baseball Encyclopedia lists him as being born in 1922.) Most articles say that Minoso was 90, with it going either way as to whether they acknowledge the uncertainty of his age. But, if we accept that he was 90, in order for him to have already turned 90, he’d be the only person with a November birthday who already had his 2015 birthday.